The dying embers unveils a story,
Of the eternal darkness,
Wintry days,
Before the Age of Golden.
Accursed Strings was the weapons of Demons,
The kiss of malediction, the gate of hell.
Birthed from the madness, came the Collapsed.
They resembled String Monsters, twisted by frenzied Strings,
With chaos burned eternally in the void of their wings.
They sought for life, spread like plague,
Dragged the living into a somber age.
Any soul they touched, was claimed by their clan,
As the cruellest punishment known to man.
***
Aurora recalled the song of the Collapsed in his head, it was a tale that had passed down from long before he was born.
After Kael had become the God of Fate, people marked the beginning of his birth as the Age of Golden. It lasted for almost fifty thousand years, right after, Aurora believed, the Age of Dawnflame came next.
To this day, he never knew what some of its content, like "Accursed Strings" or "eternal darkness" had meant in the poem. Although he became the God of Calamity, bearing more knowledge than any but one across the world, many histories still remained mysteries.
Being able to see the past and future, of course, Kael was the most knowledgeable God throughout existence.
However, even to him, many secrets of the universe had yet to be unveiled—
And one of the secrets was the Collapse.
Humans were very different to beasts, although they all categorised as animals, humans have Sapience. Sapience grants the capacity for high-level wisdom, self-awareness and generally more complexity of behaviour, distinguishing humans to other creatures.
This also applied in the case of String Masters and String Monsters, they were human or beast who possessed an Instrument. They have no difference in the Tuning world, but biologically, Sapience was still the key distinction.
However, when a String Master has depleted their resonance, and was also under extreme psychological or physical torment, would they lose the Sapience.
Hence, the Collapse.
In the event of a Collapse, the String Master will become a String Monster, permanently.
They would lose reason, exposed to immeasurable suffering that also actively makes them seek bloodthirst.
It was a true sight of horror. Aurora throughout his journey, encountered countless of this very scenario. Sometimes, they were able to be saved. Other times, they relied on him to put them out of their misery.
So, he was very surprised to hear this term again, as he hoped this issue would've been solved after one hundred thousand years.
It's not like there weren't ways to cure the Collapsed, but each was very situational.
For starters, the longer someone had fallen to Collapse, it would become exponentially harder to transform them back. At both of their prime, Kael and Aurora had once encountered a Collapsed who unfortunately lived in this curse for over a century.
The Collapsed itself was also an Angel before it fell, which was another factor into consideration, their strength.
After Aurora and Kael had tried everything they could, they still couldn't bring him back. In the end, the only thing they could've offered was a destined death.
'At my current level… I might be able to bring a Collapsed back before they hit 10 seconds…'
He thought to himself calmly, but responded with nothing but hesitant in his voice.
"Of course I know about Collapse, Madam… don't tell me…"
"Yeah." Renna nodded.
"Many wounds of the knights looked like it had come from a greataxe. There were many corpses of String Monsters around the campsite, including their Queen. After examining their biological structure, it was deduced that no one could've caused the wounds on many of the knights but Simon himself."
"It's not within his nature to perform mass murder, thus he must've been under the influence of either Collapse or some other mental manipulation."
"What made you think it was the first one, Madam?" Aurora asked with scepticism in his voice.
"Becuase I want to conclude it as such." Renna answered firmly.
"When a Collapsed dies, its corpse will return to normal, with no traces of it falling into such depravity. But, we can still gather some other information."
"He was resonance-less for a long time when we found him, on top of that, he was under both long term mental stress for progression and immense physical strain in battle against a horde of String Monsters. Not only this fits the criteria of Collapse, but there were no traces of mind control spells either. He continued to fight, killing everything in front of him — comrades or enemies with nothing but brute force, since his resonance had long depleted."
"Such an animalistic behaviour… if he was not Collapsed, then I would've killed him myself."
Aurora noticed the slight antipathy in her voice, which made him wonder why she would portray such emotion, when normally they would be grieving the passing of their colleague.
As if answering his confusion, Renna continued, her expression was full of regret.
"We aren't the only ones mourning today, Aurora." She said, biting down her lips.
"Hundreds of families had lost a husband, wife, father, mother, sons and daughters."
"Professors don't need approval from me for everything they do, but this was different. He knew that if he had come to me, asking for students or other staff to help him navigate an unknown tomb, the idea would be rejected. So, he used the name of the academy behind our back, the source of an unknown tomb from the black market, and gained support from the Kingdom. When they had finally informed us, just a day before you arrived at the interview, they were already amidst the battle."
"He was responsible for the death of the knights, and we are responsible for him. His name will be marked off, removed from the academy staff list for insubordination, unauthorized command, reckless endangerment and much more."
She paused for a second, seeing the painful expression on Aurora's face, she signed heavily.
"You did the right thing, not continuing with the exploration. I hope you won't take offense, we too, pain for the loss. But punishment is needed, even for a dead man, his own selfish, reckless actions must not be repeated."
"No, Madam." Aurora nodded.
"I completely agree with your decision."
"...Let me be alone for a second."
Hearing the tiredness in her voice, Aurora bowed slightly, then quietly left the room.